Service Requests

BP4SM 9.3
Greg Baker (gregb@ifost.org.au)
 How to structure a teams
work

Usually make less experienced staff do the
following:
Answer the phones
Monitor for incoming email requests
Process requests coming in through employee self-
service
Handle what they can, escalate what they cant

Often called a help desk or service desk

 When is that a bad
idea?

When your customers time is much more
valuable that your staffing costs.
Stock broking
Parliament

When your team is very small.

When your team is a Theory-of-Constraints

bottleneck for the organisation.
 What do customers call
about?

Request information (service request)
Request some service (service request)
Report that something has broken and needs
to be fixed (incident)
Needing a change in process or environment
(change)
Service Requests

Logging (Entitlement Phase)
 Registering a new
interaction ( service
)
request
 Whos asking?
Remember: you can

auto-complete this
field. Leave it blank and
hit Fill to search.

Leave Service
Recipient blank and it
will copy from Primary
Contact.

Enter a name if a
secretary is calling on
behalf of an executive,
or someone calling for
a colleague.
 Reminder: ways to find
contacts

Type the persons whole name. Usually
Surname, Firstname. Press Alt-F9 to make
sure its right.
Type *DAVID* and then Alt-F9 (finds all the
Davids)
Hit Alt-F9 on an empty field. This brings up a
search screen.
 Is this person a whining,
annoying repeat complainer?

Get a list of the customers

other requests by clicking
on the magic colour wand
icon.
 Service and Affected
CI
Required: either Business
Service, Affected CI or both.
Determines team who will handle
this problem (unless over-ridden)
Business Configuration
Service: the Item: the unique
service you offer to name for the thing
the customer has a affected.
name. PC1024256
Email SAP
Finance K: drive
HR
Note: magic wand buttons (shows other active calls about this item or
service)
A note about subscriptions

Not everyone can call about every service.
Your department doesnt use that application.
You arent authorised to use that application.

To be allowed to call, there must be a

Subscription between the contact and the
business service.
Title and Description
One-line summary

Full details of the nature of

the problem.

Search the knowledge base for

solutions and information related to the
description text.
 Cheque yore speling

To bring up the
spellchecker,
Hit Ctrl-Alt-C or Shift-Alt-
C or press the spell
checker icon:

This is only active on

long text fields (such as
the Description and
update journals).
Categories

If you choose request for
administration or request for
information the menu bar adds Quick
Close and Submit.

A service desk call can get escalated to a new

incident or escalated to relate to an existing
incident; or you can fix it immediately.

A request for a change will have to escalate into a

change ticket and go through the appropriate
workflow.
 Subcategory and
Classification

Just used for reporting.
Get tweaked occasionally.
Options depend on chosen Category
Incidents Request for Request for Request for
Data Administrati Information Change
Desktop on Complaint Emergency
Hardware Grant Access General Normal
Network Information
Password Standard
Performance Reset How To
Security Invalid Request
Software Status
 Impact and Urgency define
Priority

Impact Urgency
1 Enterprise 1 Critical
2 Site/Dept 2 High
3 Multiple Users 3 Average
4 User 4 - Low

Enterprise + Critical or High = Highest

priority.
Site/Dept + Critical = Highest priority
....
User + Low = Lowest priority
High priority incidents have special
handling.
 Congratulations! You have
completed all mandatory
fields!

Other common fields
Medium of request (email, chat, phone,fax)
Call back method
Alternate contact number
Attachments (other supporting documents)
Expected resolution date
Closure code and Solution
Can you solve it now?

(Quick Close) Provide a
fulfillment code and

solution

And then press

 (Quick Close) Done!

The customer has just been emailed by Service Manager to say that this
ticket has been opened and then closed. It also appears in employee self-
 Exercise Quick
Close

Imagine you have been called by a customer asking for
some information. Log a ticket in their name by going
to Service Desk then Register New Interaction
Your instructor will suggest an appropriate Service
and/or Affected CI
Write a title and description.
Set the category to request for information.
Find a suitable subcategory and classification.
The impact and urgency are likely to be low.
Hit quick close and supply a solution and fulfillment
code.
Searching

 Searching Tricks

Smart Search Enter 10146 to find SD10146
ROB* This field begins with ROB
*ROB* This field has ROB in it somewhere
>SD10148 Find any ticket newer than
SD10148
 A search can return several
results; possible output styles
Style 1
Style 2
 Small matches

Only one match? You go straight to the record.

No matches?
 Exercise Searching

You want to find the ticket you just closed.
Look for records closed between yesterday and
today
Or, look for records where you are the owner
Or, look for records with that primary contact
Search for all open tickets
Service Requests

Service Manager tools; what you can work on
What if I cant solve it
immediately?

Log the ticket as before
Hit Submit instead of Quick Close.
Submit = Save

The ticket is now in the to-do
view

What can I do with a
ticket?

Someone else called asking for
the same thing.

You can also create templates

if this happens a lot. (Then use
Apply Template to fill fields in
quickly.)
What can I do with a
ticket?

Show or link to
related records.
What can I do with a
ticket?

Its a good idea to write up

anything complicated. Then
other staff can search for it
later and learn from your
wisdom.
What can I do with a
ticket?

Send yourself an email to

remind yourself to work on
this again.
Send Reminder
Screen

How long? D Is that
HH:MM:SS. working
hours, or
clock hours?
On what shift?

Do you want
the reminder
even if youve
worked on it?

What do you want the

reminder to say?
What can I do with a
ticket?

Its not real unless youve

put it on to a dead tree, eh?
What can I do with a
ticket?

Add something that must be

done before this ticket will
be allowed to close. (Only
applies to tickets which have
a related incident.)
What can I do with a
ticket?

If you have service level

agreements, this shows the
alarms that have fired. E.g.
50% of allowed time has
been used.
What can I do with a
ticket?

They dont need it any

more.
 Exercise More
actions

Imagine you have been called by a customer
asking for some information that requires
some research. Log a ticket in their name.
Instead of Quick Close, use Submit.
Find the ticket in your to-do queue. Double-
click on it.
Send yourself a reminder to work on it in a few
minutes time. Use a Pop-up or Email.
Service Requests

Assignment and Journals
 Ticket Lifecycle
(Request for Information or Incident)

Registered Abandone
d

Categorize
d Customer
Not
Satisfied
Assigned

Fulfilled
Request for
administration adds a
status Waiting for Closed
Approval.
Request for change has
no Categorized or
 Normal Status

Status Meaning
Registered Recorded, written down
Categorised Subcategory and classification
have been filled in.
Assigned Given to a group and/or a
person to work on.
Fulfilled We think were done; waiting
on the customer to say so
Closed The customer thinks were done
too
Moving to the next
status

The only status after Registered is Categorized.

Why should I bother?

Updating the status like this lets the customer
know that a ticket is being worked on. (Quick
Close is no longer available.)
Some Service Level Objectives are based
around the length of time a ticket spends in
each state.
 Im not persuaded

Some organisations simplify ticket workflow
further.
Some dont bother updating the status.
Some just use one kind of ticket (everything is
an interaction, or everything is an incident).
Some remove or add other fields
Feel free to sleep for the next few slides
But everyone keeps Assignee
and Assignment Group
and Activity Logs
.anyway, remember to save your
work

 And on to the Assigned
status

Notice that the Assignment Group and

Assignee Name are mandatory now
(Red asterisk.)
How to fob off your work onto
someone else

Change the assignee to someone else in your
team (They are the expert at this sort of
thing.)
Change the assignment group (This kind of
request is handled by another team). Leave
the assignee field blank unless you know who
to assign it to.
How do I get a list of
possible assignees?

Clear the Assignee field, and

then hit the fill button.
 The most annoying error
message when you are trying to
save a ticket...

A journal update is required for almost every change you make to a ticket.
Answer the question: why did you do this?
 Journal Updates
(History and Audit

Log)
What kind of update? Appears in
employee self-
service portal?

Say what you just

did.

History of this
ticket.
Example

 Exercise
Assignment

Find the ticket you created previously.
Update the status to Categorized and hit Save.
Update the status to Assigned and hit Save. You
will receive an error about needing an update.
Assign the ticket to your colleague by clearing out the
Assignee field and hitting Alt-F9. If your colleague
works in a different team, update the Assignment
Group field as well.
Write a suitable update and hit the Save button.
Confirm that the ticket now appears in their To-Do list.
(They might need to refresh the To-Do list.)
Service Requests

Fulfillment and Closure
Fulfilled

 Fulfillment Code and
Solution

Note: collapsed the
section called
Interaction
Details; expanded
the section called
Resolution.
 Now what?

After fulfillment, there are two possibilities:
Ticket closure = Close Interaction = Completed
Customer Not Satisfied
Usually you wait a few days after fulfillment
before closing.
Some organisations have policies on this.
Some organisations do this automatically.
Closure


 Closed at last!

Note: read-only. History still visible. The customer receives an email

to say that this ticket has been closed.
 Exercise Closure

Find a ticket which is assigned to you.
Move it to the fulfilled status.
Remember to hit Save and put in a suitable
journal entry.
You will need to fill in a resolution

Close the ticket.

Service Requests

Everything else
 Abandon

When no-one seems to care about the ticket being
finished any more.
Default reasons:
Not Reproducible
No Fault Found
Unable to Solve
Withdrawn by User
No User response
Only a few roles have the right to declare a ticket
Abandoned.
Default: BP 2nd Line SRF Analyst can make Assigned,
Fulfilled or Customer Not Satisfied
 Auto-close

Customer receives an email when a ticket is
marked Abandoned. Three more days of no
response and the ticket is auto-closed.
Except where:
Your site has decided on a different schedule
Your site has decided to auto-close from other
states
The ticket has Exclude AutoClose ticked.
 Other stuff you probably
dont want to stay awake for

You can add attachments (e.g. a screenshot, a
form)
Hit the Add File button in the Attachments
section.
You can save a lot of typing by creating
templates for common queries
Theres a free text search tab
You can save a search as a view and it
appears under Favorites and Dashboards
 What now?

This document was developed and placed in the Creative
Commons by Greg Baker from the Institute for Open
Systems Technologies Pty Ltd.
There are more in this series, covering Incident
Management, Change and other topics at
http://www.ifost.org.au/Training/ServiceManager/
Many customers request these course materials be
customised to suit their environment. Many also ask IFOST
to deliver face-to-face or web-based training sessions
based around these materials. Please contact Greg Baker (
gregb@ifost.org.au) if you would like to discuss this.
We are always interested to hear your feedback.